Jeremy Bentham (utilitarian): “I now feel that I am dying; our care must be to minimize pain. Do not let the servants come into the room, and keep away the youths; it will be distressing to them, and they can be of no service.”

John Wilkes Booth: “Tell my mother—I died—for my country…I thought I did for the best…Useless! Useless!”

Jean Jacques Rousseau: “See the sun, whose smiling face calls me; see that immeasurable light. There is a God! Yes, God Himself, who is opening His arms and inviting me to taste at last that eternal and unchanging joy that I had so long desired.”

Hitler: “Above all, I enjoin the government of the nation and the people to uphold the racial laws to the limit and to resist mercilessly the poisoner of all nations, interational Jewry…My wife and I choose to die in order to escape the shame of overthrow or capitulation. It is our wish for our bodies to be cremated immediately on the place where I have performed the greater part of my daily work during twelve years of service to my people.”

Thomas Hobbes: “I shall be glad to find a hole to creep out of the world at.”